11:something: My friends are signing off for the day and warn me of the advent of the rain. I decide to stick around the office.

Just like I thought -all that noise, the skies were bluffing. I go hang out at my distant relatives’.

3:something: I go home. The rains decide to let rip just I make it to the gates. I knock and knock and knock and knock … well you get the idea. Telatachichu endih yidebdeb. Then again, we are supposed to love and pray for our enemies. Seytan endih yidebdeb endalil degmo rain would be a most welcome respite for the devil after spending eons in and around the fire.

Anyway…

I call my landlord’s son -his phone is switched off (or as I would learn later, tebelashitual.). I call my landlord -he does not answer (or as I would learn later, his phone was in the jacket which he had taken off).

I am left there, knocking, getting soaked and contemplating figurative applications for my situation. It sure is sad is to make it to the gates, only to get hammered and sickled, in a bad way.

Well, not exactly in a bad way. For one thing, I don’t hate rain that much (though I could take comfort in avoiding it -should I desire to avoid it.) Second, I was feeling very sleepy on the evening stated, that it was like I was carrying my sleep home in a jug, careful not to spill it. But after the debacle, I end up taking a cold shower before bed. It sure beats taking one in the morning. My fascination with the figurative side of thing continues into the bathroom. This is what it must be like to approach chicks -takes a lot of daring to feel the first few cold drops and then, you don’t want to get out.

Sad.

Our dog joins me at the door. He is urging me to be more assertive in my knocking and get us out of the frigging rain,puh leeze! Next thing, he is suggesting the names of people whom I should be calling.

“Son of a bitch! Can’t you see me doing just that?”

One

The son whom I was telling you about, he makes me feel old. We are very cool in the house but if I happen on him when he is chilling with his chums, he gets visibly uncomfortable, the way we were made uncomfortable when meeting our parents or elders on our way back from school with friends.

That, right there, is the kind of shit that makes one think if one is of a different generation from these kids;

That, right there, is the kind of shit to make one feel like a dinosaur;

The kind of shit that makes one think whether one should say sayonara to T-shirts and take to wearing tweed jackets.

And most of them are taller than me -what’s up with that? You know I don’t like looking up to people.

And the kid doesn’t even like Tupac! I mean, isn’t digging Tupac an integral part of being hip? That is, unless Tupac has suddenly went out of style and has been supplanted by the likes of Eminem (and mind you, not the bangin’ Eminem of old, but Eminem who is not afraid or is fond of lying), Chris Brown and an assortment of dudes.

People, we have gotten old! A generational chasm has been created; a chasm so wide that, if you filled it up with the water I took in last night, could float ocean liners.

I gave the kid prominent songs of the big five, kind of hit him with the real heat: Hit‘em Up -Tupac; Notorious Thugs -Biggie and Bone Thugs n Harmony; Ether -Nas; Renegade -Jay Z and Eminem. His response -tepid at best.

Man, I remember when back in tenth grade, a certain Dagmawi (who used to wear the jersey of some famous basketball player) reported to the class that the Notorious Big has been shot in retaliation for killing Tupac Amaru Shakur. I had never heard before that moment of those two dead people (I think Dagmawi went on to add that, Tupac may actually be alive, somewhere, biding his time-apparently 7 years-to make his big come back) but it didn’t take me long to realize that they were important people and that our lives would never be the same again after their demise.

But try telling today’s kids about Tupac and Biggie and they will act like you are Alemayehu Eshete and you are raving about Elvis Presley and James Brown.

And you are left with shit else for option but to take up the expression “ay yezare lijoch!”